OUR MISSION & STORY.

Disability Culture Crew Australia, led by Amy Gray. It is a based solely on re-building a positive new culture, providing a set of resources and tools for Australia's Disability Industry and most of all; creating safe, ethical, and respectful world-class disability care for our most beloved humans on the planet!

We are so passionate about our mission to help the disability community that we built a set of 10 core tenets to live by and die by. These reflect our values and our mission to help as many providers as we possibly can.

Relentless Evolution
- Soar, Don't Settle
- Pursue excellence relentlessly. Challenge the status quo, setting and maintaining the highest standards in everything we do. Elevate your expectations and soar to new heights with us.
Innovation Insight
- Think Outside. Thrive Inside.
- Embrace a culture of continuous innovation. Foster creativity and forward-thinking, always staying at the forefront of industry advancements. Think beyond boundaries, thrive within possibilities.
Empower & Ignite
- Fueling Growth, Igniting Potential.
- Empowerment is our engine. Provide unparalleled training, expertise, and insights to fuel the growth and unleash the potential of our clients and teams.
Community Compass
- Connecting Beyond Service.
- We understand the importance of community connection. Beyond service provision we value building relationships that create a positive impact.
Diversity Not Division
- Strength in Every Shade.
- We Celebrate diversity and inclusion. Recognize the strength that comes from embracing different perspectives and experiences. We believe every shade contributes to the culture we wish to create.
Leadership Launchpad
- Pioneering Positive Change.
- Lead by example. Our Leadership Launchpad tenet encourages initiative, shaping industry trends, inspiring others, and being at the forefront of positive change.
Client Cohesion
- Where our clients & teams move forward together.
- Prioritize the needs and satisfaction of our customers. We aim to always ensure success, building lasting relationships based on trust, reliability & experience
Learning Lighthouse
- From our learnings, we shine the torch.
- We Embrace the power of continuous learning. Our Learning Lighthouse encourages curiosity, adaptability, and the pursuit of knowledge at every level of our organization.
Accountability Anchor
- Our Commitment, Your Confidence.
- We Hold ourselves accountable and always hold the responsibility for the impact we have on clients, communities, and the industry.
Gamechanging Attitudes.
- Ignite, Challenge, Triumph over obstacles.
- We approach challenges with boldness and courage. With this attitude, we always aim to push boundaries, dare to redefine what's possible, and triumph over the challenges that do not serve the disability community.

While these tenets show our commitment to help as many providers as possible, the true fuel that ignites it all is Amy's daughter Illyana.

Illyana is the sweetest, most genuine and kindest young person you will meet. She is resilient, brave and has more courage in her delicate little finger than I do in my whole spirit. She is entirely remarkable.

She also has some impressive credentials against her name:

PTLS

Level 3 Autism

PEJ FED & nil by mouth

Chronic Aspiration pneumonia

Femoral torsion, bilat

Hearing loss, bilat

Non-Verbal

Severe intellectual disability

Poor tone

Gastroparesis

Severe dysphagia

Newly discovered and yet to be treated Obstructive Sleep Apnea

Intractable Epilepsy, generalized seizure disorder.

Many other issues, but who has the time to worry about those!

Illyana has Potocki – Lupski (PTLS) syndrome which is a genetic condition born from a partial duplication of chromosome 17. This happened at the point of the first cell dividing at conception.

Illyana also has a chronic seizure disorder. This has been responsible for some permanent and persistent brain injuries. She has lost the ability to talk, eat, drink, use her hands for sign language, and has had permanent damage to big muscle groups in her legs, causing stroke like weaknesses, especially on her left side. Epilepsy is dangerous and unpredictable. Illyana has had thousands of seizures over the years, maybe even more. She has seizures from standing, resulting in head injuries and trips in ambulances. She has seizures in her sleep resulting in her losing her airway and developing aspiration pneumonias. She has had seizures in the shower, which have nearly taken her life on multiple occasions, most recently at restaurant in sydney when we were out at disability networking event.

Illyana doesn’t eat or drink either, which is a really hard to compute concept for most people. She is fed into her bowel and she lives exclusively off a very specialized formula. We needed her stomach bypassed as she would just vomit constantly. She has a type of paralysis in her stomach so the formula that she is fed doesn’t move through her system, it just sits there and pools until she brings it all back up. Her little tummy doesn’t have the natural peristaltic action that pushes the contents of the stomach down.

She is also a huge aspiration risk. Aspirating is when you breathe fluids or solids into your lungs, the problem being that your lungs aren’t designed for that. The lungs try to reabsorb the contents but mostly it turns infective and becomes pneumonia, which can be devastating. If it happens regularly it can scar a person’s lungs and it can have long-term effects.

So for Illyana, the bowel is the safest place for her to be fed. Feeding into the bowel, or the jejunum requires a significant sterile style set up to ensure there are no bugs introduced in it. The bowel does not have the same protective acids that the stomach does. Managing the tube is very difficult too. It can only be changed by specialists in an interventional radiology suite. This needs to be done every three months.

Now with all of this, Illyana has experienced both the best and unfortunately, the worst the disability industry has to offer. We have had unspeakable negative experiences from support workers that if gone unnoticed, could have cost Illy her life. She has been a sufferer of unacceptable care under the “currently accepted” medical protocols and patient care. She has gone through it all, and we have been right there beside her, protecting, managing, and guiding others on how to do the same all these years.

With all the lows, we have also created highs, and one of those is by starting this company from the ground up, and making it my life's work to help other participants receive better care, and better support so they and their families can have a world-class experience. We are doing this through DCCA. We are going levels above and will stop at nothing to help as many providers develop their business and service provision so it holds to the standard that our disability community deserves, and so they too can rise above the pack and become game-changers in the industry and achieve long term success.

This is our story and our mission, we look forward to having you join this path, to become better providers.

Disability Culture Crew Australia, led by Amy Gray. It is a based solely on re-building a positive new culture, providing a set of resources and tools for Australia's Disability Industry and most of all; creating safe, ethical, and respectful world-class disability care for our most beloved humans on the planet!

We are so passionate about our mission to help the disability community that we built a set of 10 core tenets to live by and die by. These reflect our values and our mission to help as many providers as we possibly can.

Relentless Evolution
- Soar, Don't Settle
- Pursue excellence relentlessly. Challenge the status quo, setting and maintaining the highest standards in everything we do. Elevate your expectations and soar to new heights with us.
Innovation Insight
- Think Outside. Thrive Inside.
- Embrace a culture of continuous innovation. Foster creativity and forward-thinking, always staying at the forefront of industry advancements. Think beyond boundaries, thrive within possibilities.
Empower & Ignite
- Fueling Growth, Igniting Potential.
- Empowerment is our engine. Provide unparalleled training, expertise, and insights to fuel the growth and unleash the potential of our clients and teams.
Community Compass
- Connecting Beyond Service.
- We understand the importance of community connection. Beyond service provision we value building relationships that create a positive impact.
Diversity Not Division
- Strength in Every Shade.
- We Celebrate diversity and inclusion. Recognize the strength that comes from embracing different perspectives and experiences. We believe every shade contributes to the culture we wish to create.
Leadership Launchpad
- Pioneering Positive Change.
- Lead by example. Our Leadership Launchpad tenet encourages initiative, shaping industry trends, inspiring others, and being at the forefront of positive change.
Client Cohesion
- Where our clients & teams move forward together.
- Prioritize the needs and satisfaction of our customers. We aim to always ensure success, building lasting relationships based on trust, reliability & experience
Learning Lighthouse
- From our learnings, we shine the torch.
- We Embrace the power of continuous learning. Our Learning Lighthouse encourages curiosity, adaptability, and the pursuit of knowledge at every level of our organization.
Accountability Anchor
- Our Commitment, Your Confidence.
- We Hold ourselves accountable and always hold the responsibility for the impact we have on clients, communities, and the industry.
Gamechanging Attitudes.
- Ignite, Challenge, Triumph over obstacles.
- We approach challenges with boldness and courage. With this attitude, we always aim to push boundaries, dare to redefine what's possible, and triumph over the challenges that do not serve the disability community.